Stephen Moyer is the cover boy in the July/August issue of Men’s Health Magazine.

In the article, by Jeff O’Connell, we find out a lot about Stephen’s workout and how he manages to stay buff and healthy and he reveals some things about himself, too.

For example, he quit smoking in 2004 when he saw his daughter mimicking him smoking. His kids have a powerful impact on him, and it’s one of the things about him we like most.

Something else he talks about is being lazy. After shadowing him at the Toyota Pro/Celebrity Race in April, when he ran two test trials and won pole position with no sleep having been on the set the night before, I sure would never think of Stephen Moyer as lazy, but he explains what he means in the interview below.

STEPHEN MOYER HAS FINISHED ONE gym workout and is walking to a boxing studio a block away for a second session. So it’s odd to hear him say, in all seriousness, ” I am lazy.” And then, to drive home the point, “I am lazy. I am lazy.”

When he works out, Moyer explains, a trainer must prod him. Otherwise he might quit and go home. “I find that I don’t go at it if I don’t have someone making me,” he says. “You’d be amazed at how quickly I let it all go.”

Part of Moyer’s ambivalence toward training comes from his upbringing. “I’m an English boy,” he says. “I played a lot of sports growing up, but I never had any kind of workout regimen. My working out was with my right arm and it involved a pint glass.”

The 41-year-old actor is currently filming the fourth season of HBO’s True Blood. In what has become an annual ritual, Moyer is shaping up so that a merely flat stomach doesn’t look like a beer belly next to the six-pack of his costar, Ryan Kwanten, a man 7 years his junior. Kwanten’s character, he says, “walks into a room and takes his shirt off. That’s his normal entrance. Ryan has minus 6 percent body fat.”

Moyer also worries about a different sort of immortality. “I didn’t want my kids to look back at the show in 20 years’ time and go, ” ‘Who’s that slobby git? Oh, it’s you, Dad.’ ”

Such is the lot of today’s vampires. Where once they lurked in dark, cobblestone-paved alleys, they’re now expected to have cobblestoned midsections. On True Blood, Japanese scientists have invented synthetic, drinkable blood, and vampires have been able to come out of the coffin as a result. From the looks of it, they headed straight to the gym and swore off not only human blood but carbohydrates as well.

Photos by James White

So here is Moyer at Gold’s Gym in Venice on a sunny California morning, grunting his way through ab exercises with his trainer of 3 years, Scot Guthrie. In order to prepare Moyer for filming in Louisiana, they turn up the heat on a training gumbo: push workouts, pull workouts, a little circuit training, some plyometrics and functional work, a dash of sports-specific training. They try not to repeat the same workout. What will all of these incongruous training styles produce when mixed together? Shock, and then forced adaptation. Guthrie points to his client’s stomach, and then to his client’s upper body: “We’re trying to take a little from here and put it there.”

Now the pair heads out to an open-air patio for medicine-ball work. Guthrie has Moyer lift the ball back behind his head as far as he possibly can, and then slam it onto the pavement. Repeatedly.

After that, Moyer turns his back to the high wall and uses both arms to heave the medicine ball as high as he can. The throws are punctuated by grunts that grow more pronounced with each rep. Workouts like this accomplish a neat trick, nailing your core and jacking up your heart rate. By the end, Moyer is winded and gasping.

“Cardio is the devil,” he rasps. Guthrie, meanwhile, sets the outdoor stage for some box jumps.

Moyer finishes by jumping rope, a nod to boxing past. Through it all he insists that if he weren’t shaping up for a physical role, he likely wouldn’t be working out regularly—certainly not this hard. “I think half of what a trainer does is make you feel shame if you don’t show up,” says the actor, who was a smoker till 2004, when he saw his then-2 1/2-year-old daughter mimicking him with a piece of chalk. He quit instantly.

MOYER SHIFTS GEARS IN OTHER ways, too. In conversation he switches accents and personality types. He also has a stunning capacity to achieve total stillness (which, as it turns out, is key when playing a vampire). To move at vamp speed—the speed of light—vampires must hold energy in reserve. That means no extraneous movement.

In an instant, Moyer snaps from leaning forward to reclined and still. He’s come to think that stillness is a quality that not just actors but every guy should add to his arsenal. “[The actors] who go into the room and don’t do anything are the ones who turn people’s heads,” he says. “Might not be able to act for shit, but they’re the ones people are interested in. They want enigmatic.”

That lesson can serve you well in job interviews and business meetings, and on dates. You’re always sitting across from casting directors. Allow them to see what they want to see in you. Keep your cards close to your chest. When you do move, be decisive, and make it count.

Consider Moyer’s postworkout workout—a sparring session at the boxing gym. Moyer’s boxing coach and sparring partner, a retired (but still young) fighter named Marcelo Crudele, stalks him around the ring, calling out cadences and instructions: “Double jab. Double jab. One-two. One-two. One-two.” Moyer responds by popping rapid-fire jab and uppercut combinations off Marcelo’s gloves.

Finally, a buzzer ends the workout. “You’re preparing for what you think is coming, and then he does something else,” Moyer says.

To read the rest of this interview go to: menshealth.com

other photo sources: huffingtonpost.com and justjared.buzznet.com